


m.l.m: multi-level (ro)mancing

by lavendori



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bad Flirting, Canon - Manga, Ch 401 spoilers, Developing Relationship, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Post-Time Skip, a LOT of really dumb flirting, kuroo the conman cons in the name of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 09:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25348291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendori/pseuds/lavendori
Summary: Long before Kuroo ever worked in the Sports Promotion Division, he scouted one (1) player that he'll forever find interesting.“You better not be here because you’re trying to rope me into some pyramid scheme,” Kei tells him the moment he sees him. Sleek and shiny as always, Kuroo pulls up in front of his house in a black Mitsubishi and rolls down the window, sporting the same sly smirk that once tormented Kei on a warm night three summers ago.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 32
Kudos: 234





	m.l.m: multi-level (ro)mancing

**Author's Note:**

> small thing i threw together upon request after making this [tweet](https://twitter.com/lavendori/status/1282385960106250240?s=20). i have nothing to say for myself except i'm sorry, i'm crying, and i'm dying: i'm sorry for the bad flirting, crying over chapter 401, and dying from the fact that haikyuu really is ending so soon... :'(

It started with a text, casual, a single line — about a week and a half after Hinata left for Brazil.

_ Guess who’s gonna be in Sendai this weekend? _

The name lights up his phone like a stray thought lurking in the back of his mind. His lips twitch. It’s been a while since he’d heard from him.

_ Well, seeing as how I’m not going to be going anywhere any time soon…  _ Kei types back.  _ Me. _

_ I’ll give you a hint… he’s not from there. _

_ Oh, well, why didn’t you say so before? It’s obviously Lev. _

_ Pleased to see you haven’t changed a bit Nobukatsukun :) _

_ Don’t be so sure. I’ve grown another few centimeters since the last time you saw me. _

_ God of course you did. _

_ Anyway. Say Lev or another friend outside of Miyagi wanted to find a nice place in town to get dinner, where would you take them? _

_ That depends. Is this friend able to treat a jobless undergraduate who’s just finished his first year? _

_ I’m offended Tsukki, that was never going to be up for debate. _

_ You? I thought we were talking about a friend. _

_ Ah, well. The friend says he’s down for yakiniku. _

_ Wow. The friend sounds like he’s thriving at work. _

_ The friend can also retract his offer if he doesn’t get a response soon. _

_ Saturday, 7PM, at Nikugen. _

_ I’ll expect a ride. _

  
  


As it turns out, Kuroo Tetsurou is currently in a business internship that involves frequent travel to various cities, including Sendai.

“You better not be here because you’re trying to rope me into some pyramid scheme,” Kei tells him the moment he sees him. Sleek and shiny as always, Kuroo pulls up in front of his house in a black Mitsubishi and rolls down the window, sporting the same sly smirk that once tormented Kei on a warm night three summers ago.

“You really have that little faith in me? I’m hurt, Tsukki,” he replies. “Is it really so hard to believe a humble city man just wanted to reconnect with an old country bumpkin friend because he happened to be in the area?”

Kei raises an eyebrow. “We haven’t talked in over two years and now this. You’re still a year away from graduation and yet…”

He gestures vaguely at the entire car.

Kuroo waves his hand. “It’s a company rental.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Kuroo rolls his eyes. “Yes. Now are you getting in or not?”

It’s a short drive to the yakiniku place, during which Kei updates Kuroo on where he’s going to school and whether he’s still enjoying volleyball (he is, even if he doesn’t show Kuroo his enthusiasm for it). The Nekoma grad is as genial and ebullient as ever. By the time they’re comfortably seated at the restaurant, he’s wheedled more details out of Kei than Kei has voluntarily revealed to anyone in months. He’d forgotten what it was like to be in Kuroo’s line of fire.

When he asks Kuroo about his general five year plans, Kei gathers that he is a few steps away from applying to the Japanese Volleyball Association.

“Are you  _ quite _ sure you aren’t trying to rope me into a pyramid scheme?” he asks with narrowed eyes, a small smile playing on the corner of his lips. “Don’t bother, I’m really not that good.”

“I see you’re still in the habit of selling yourself short,” Kuroo replies, shaking his head. “But you can relax, I’m not here on a scouting mission. And besides—”

He breaks off into a smug grin. “It’s a little too late for you to be worried about that.”

Kei’s smile drops as he realizes. “No, don’t say it—”

“Spring, 2012. Scouted your reluctant ass ages ago.”

Kei groans.

“Of course.”

* * *

It continued after the second text. Then the third. Then once again after the fourth. Until at some point, by the 20th time, it somehow became a regular thing.

True to his word, Kuroo never employs any of his ripening salesman tactics on Kei. Instead, they talk about interests, casual hobbies outside of volleyball, and spicy updates on the people they know.

The car Kuroo picks him up in changes every week. ( _ Why stick to the same boring thing?  _ he’d say when asked.) Kei jokingly criticizes him for being too flashy. Kuroo laughs, then comes around for Kei again the next time he’s in town. Rinse and repeat.

Kei can’t explain why they keep doing this. After all, ever since Kuroo graduated high school, they hadn’t really kept up. Yet now, they’ve seen each other at least once every week of his winter break and hold small text exchanges about twice a week, which for Kei, is already too frequent.

_ Do you just get a kick out of poking your head into people’s business and imposing your advice onto them? _ Kei types to him one night after Kuroo explains how he found success in obtaining an internship so early on in his university career.

_ You know, I prefer the word mentoring, _ he replies.  _ But you’re not wrong. _

_ Somehow that sounds worse. _

_ What’s so awful about believing in people’s potential? _

_ Won't you always be distant from their present selves? _

_ Why not be close to both? _

_ So what happens after someone reaches that potential? _

_ Hope they can pick up on their own from where you left off and move onto the next. _

_ Interesting. _

_ (  _ **_._ ** _.  _ **_._ ** _ ) _

_ Then there’s no point in sticking around. _

_ That depends. Some folks never stop evolving. _

_ They stay interesting. _

Kei stops responding after that.

A few months later, as exam season and Kuroo’s graduation begins to approach, so does Kuroo.

They both stop responding altogether.

* * *

If Kei wanted to be honest with himself about when it  _ really  _ all started, he’d probably pinpoint it to a cool October night and lingering hands on his wrist.

They were having their final training session with the main Tokyo schools, a few weeks before prelims. Ukai had told him to seek Kuroo out as the prime model for a middle blocker Kei could learn from. It was easy enough. As usual, the third gym regulars roped him into practice. As usual, Kuroo was confident enough to dole out more advice.

At some point, at the end of one of their plays after Bokuto’s spike blows through Kei’s attempted block, Kuroo slaps him on the back with a lamenting groan.

“Tsukki, I told you to keep your arms forward and firm.”

“I am,” Kei retorts.

“Yes, I can see you trying,” Kuroo replies with a bored look on his face. “But you’re just a few millimeters off from maximum potential. Here—”

Without warning, he reaches around for Kei’s wrists and pulls his arms up above his head from behind. Next thing he knows, Kuroo’s warm breath is at his ear.

“You wanna angle them more like this. And keep your hands closer together and shaped like you’re about to grab the ball.”

Kei sucks in his breath. Wrist to wrist, he can feel Kuroo’s pulse against his skin, hear the pounding of his chest along his spine. Every whisper of movement between them amplified a hundredfold. Slowly, with care, Kei swallows.

“I know,” he manages to croak. “It’s just a lot harder to get right in the moment.”

“I get that,” Kuroo says, keeping both their arms in the same place. “So remember this position. Memorize its feeling. Call yourself back to it over and over again until it becomes embedded into your system.”

Just as quickly as it had happened, Kuroo lets go and steps back. Kei keeps his hands up for a moment longer, staring determinedly at the floor as he commits the physical memory of this position to heart. The back of his neck still burns from the proximity. If the Nekoma captain had meant for the demonstration to be effective, he certainly achieved it. Kei will have no trouble remembering, the exact placement of his blocking form now seared into his brain, forever paired with the sensation of Kuroo’s heated palms leaving marks on his skin.

_ Memorize its feeling. _

Kei would be lying if he said he’d never thought about it during the following weeks to come. But, as life goes, the heat of a moment always fades away with absence and time. They play their final match together at Nationals, and Kei resigns himself to probably never seeing him again.

*

_ Call yourself back to it over and over again. _

It wasn’t difficult to be reminded of Kuroo in his remaining high school years when so much of his advice and presence seemed to call out to Kei from every corner of his volleyball life. He showed up whenever Kei taught the first years better blocking techniques, when they traveled to Tokyo for the annual training camp at Shinzen, and in all the other little moments when he faced a challenging opponent. It was annoying and persistent, the way only Kuroo can be.

As a rule, Kei prefers not to consider any possibilities that have less than a slim chance of working out. Him becoming good enough at volleyball, for one. Regardless of what he wanted in high school, the facts are straightforward and never lie: Kuroo is two years older and lives in Tokyo. He has a life of his own apart from Kei, over 300 kilometers away. There was nothing to consider.

Until, of course, when Kuroo showed up in Sendai out of the blue.

Now, they’re both finished with high school and have both started working on concrete career plans. More importantly, it looked as if there’d be a chance of them actually seeing more of each other. For a short hour in the dead of night, after a long day of text exchanges, Kei had been horrified to realize that the silly, floaty feeling in his chest might have resembled something scarily akin to hope.

But instead, as he should have predicted, after coming back for a brief period of time in Kei’s life, Kuroo had disappeared once again. Kei thinks he may have seen the guy at his match once or twice, about a year and a half after their first reunion, but he never stuck around long enough to say hi. Other than that — radio silence.

Kei doesn’t hold it against him. He knows he’s a busy man. He has big goals and big dreams ahead of him.  _ Connecting people, _ he had said he wanted to do. But the path to JVA is not an easy one.

Perhaps connecting others is his destiny. Perhaps where Kei is involved, Kuroo has already completed his job. Kei did become a higher ranked blocker for his age after all.

It’s a destiny that promises to lead Kuroo away from him. As he told Kei, once he’s taken an interest and scouted someone, he moves onto the next, unless there’s a reason keeping him hooked.

And Kei highly doubts he’s someone who’s given him a good reason to stay.

* * *

“That was a phenomenal game! You two had us at the edge of our seats the entire time! Even Tsukki leaned forward at multiple points!”

“Shut up, Yamaguchi. You can’t expect someone to witness the King fall for Hinata’s decoy trick after three years of playing on the same team and not show  _ some _ semblance of interest.”

“What was that?!”

“Don’t mind, Kageyama!! But he’s right you know… heh—”

“SHUT UP!”

Their laughter gets lost amid the cacophony of chatter around them filling the whole stadium. In no time, the rest of their first Karasuno teammates show up to greet them. After the usual rapid-fire catch up rounds and many interruptions by fans seeking Kageyama’s autograph, they arrange to meet at their local izakaya and prepare to leave the venue.

“I’ll wait for you in the parking lot,” Kei tells Yamaguchi, who ducks out for a quick run to the bathroom.

Outside the front doors, Kei stands off to the side, pulling his phone out to pass the time. He’s scrolling through some mildly interesting article about honey bees when a familiar drawl jolts him out of his task.

“Still enjoying volleyball, Nobukatsukun?”

Kei looks up, an instinctive smirk twitching at his lips.

Decked out fully in a suit and tie, a classic Cheshire cat smile, and clean sneakers: newly minted JVA member Kuroo Testerou. The new job, along with the past few years of hard work it took for him to get there, looks good on him — but Kei isn’t about to tell him that.

“I don’t know, you tell me,” he replies. “I could’ve sworn you were at my last game.”

“You were looking?” Kuroo grins.

Kei rolls his eyes. “You’re not hard to miss.”

“It’s okay. You can just say you missed me,” he winks.

“I don’t miss people,” Kei deadpans.

“Ah,” Kuroo says, nodding. “‘Cause you’ve been thinking about me everyday already, I see.”

Against his will, Kei’s face heats up. Looking away, he asks, “What’s gotten  _ you _ so confident today?”

“Let’s just call it a hunch. Got a lot of good hunches today.” With a cryptic smile, he shoots Kei a sidelong gaze. “Hope I’m not wrong about this one.”

Kei releases a heavy sigh. “Okay, fine, I’ll take a damn business card if you really insi—”

“What? No, I don’t care about that, I came here to ask—”

“Yes,” Kei answers.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” Kei repeats, throwing his hands up in mock defeat. “You wore me down. I’m free this Thursday. As usual, I expect a ride.”

He pauses.

“Welcome back to Sendai.”

Kuroo stares blankly at him for a few moments before his face splits into a genuine smile.

“Okay then! It’s a date.”

“But if you get too busy to have friends again, let me know,” Kei says. “So I can find a new JV associate to drive me around in a Lexus.”

Kuroo laughs. “No promises there, but you know… I think I’d make an exception for someone who’s more than a friend.”

“God.” Kei covers his face with a hand. “You’re so embarrassing.”

“You love it,” Kuroo says smugly. “And by the way,” he rushes to tack on, “I take it back when I said I didn’t care about the other thing, I most definitely do, but I’m sure we have all the time in the world to talk business now whenever we please so—”

“Oh my god, shut  _ up _ .”

“Tsukki?”

Kei turns to find Yamaguchi and Yachi, looking curiously between him and Kuroo.

“Hi, Kuroo-san,” Yamaguchi greets with a bow. Turning to Tsukki, he adds, “Ready to leave?”

“Yeah,” Kei responds, glancing back at Kuroo. “Let’s go.”

“See you around, Tsukki,” he says with a wink.

“Yeah,” Kei smiles. “See you.”

Perhaps Kei is an interesting person after all.

**Author's Note:**

> join me in being depressed about the end of haikyuu at [@lavendori](https://twitter.com/lavendori) and/or [tumblr](https://lavendori.tumblr.com)!


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